My Back Yard

Boxes can’t get up and walk away. Can they?

Yesterday I lugged two heavy boxes of Japanese books into the kitchen to weigh down the vinyl flooring. The pretty yet impractical blue-accented white vinyl flooring hasn’t been behaving. It’s lifting up around the edges. So I finally experimented with gluing down one corner.

It’s unusual for me to tackle a home improvement project. I’m more likely to plant flowers or vacuum the rugs. But I had high hopes. I read the instructions on the glue, cleaned the wood underlying the vinyl, and spread the sticky stuff with a brush. Then I checked the glue 30, 45 and 60 minutes afterwards to see if it had reached the right degree of tackiness.

Finally, the glue was ripe. So I grabbed some nearby weights–two boxes of books about Japan. Iggy has been boxing up my collection as a prelude to donating them to a university. If they could help the vinyl adhere, the books would have finally served a practical purpose. I felt good about making creative use of the materials at hand. Surely the flooring couldn’t throw off these heavy containers.

A couple hours later I was surprised to see flooring lifting up. Apparently the boxes had walked away.

Well, they didn’t really walk away. Iggy thought I moved the boxes to criticize him for not getting them out of the house. So he moved them off the flooring and out of the kitchen. I moved them back, but it may be too late to save my glue job.

But at least I have the satisfaction of having tried to make myself handy at home.

I’ve been dragging my feet about getting our second-floor bathroom painted. I picked the colors awhile ago with an interior design consultant.

But all of the additional decisions seemed daunting:
* Strip the wallpaper
* Choose and get a ventilation fan installed
* Pick a new light fixture with one socket that doesn’t work–and, anyway, we can’t find the cover for the fixture
* Find an electrician, painter, etc.

When I met an architect, I asked her for the name of someone who could do the electrical work. She gave me the name. When she saw me a month later, she asked if I’d call. No. It’s way too daunting.

But, lo and behold, the contractor called me today. Turns out he paints, in addition to doing electrical work. Also, he will make recommendations about the fan. We talked and he’s going to send me a rough estimate as prelude to deciding whether we’ll meet.

Something may happen to our bathroom. But don’t hold your breath.

I read a checklist to help decide which items to keep and which to toss:

1. “Does it lift my energy when I think about it or look at it?
2. Do I absolutely love it?
3. Is it genuinely useful?

WeatherBug tells me that today’s predominant pollen is “Birch, Maple and Poplar/Aspen/Cottonwood.”

At least one of those does NOT agree with me. My eyes teared up while I was giving a presentation today. That has never happened before. I’d better stay inside the rest of today. No playing with my squirrels.

Andy strode to the microphone in the middle of my high school’s gym and began to sing. “On a tree by a river a little tom tit sang, willow, tit willow, tit willow.” He smirked as he sounded these lines from Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta, The Mikado. I guess he was proud of himself for exploiting the talent show to repeatedly say the t-word under the guise of culture. I felt embarrassed. I also felt appalled. Andy was abusing one of my favorite pieces of music.

I listened to The Mikado play at home on a hulking hi-fi stereo in a wooden cabinet the size of a refrigerator turned on its side. My body sat on a bland beige sectional sofa, but my mind drifted away to an exotic Japan of schoolgirls, scoundrels, and heroes who fall in love, engage in deception, and scheme to get their way. There’s an elaborate plot that I might boil down to to elderly Katisha loves noble Nanki-Poo who loves young, lissome Yum-Yum who loves Nanki-Poo, but is betrothed to Koko. Apparently it was penned as a slap at British politics, but that went way over my head.

Some parts of the operetta were tough to relate to. Especially those “Three little maids from school.” I felt certain they were the popular girls. Whereas I was the quintessential last girl picked for a team in gym class.

Instead, I identified with Katisha, the elderly spinster who’s hot in pursuit of Nanki-Poo, the emperor’s son. I had to admire her gumption. I wouldn’t have dared aim so high. Katisha touched me most at her lowest point when she sang “Alone and yet alive.” I felt alone, too. So it was especially satisfying when Koko sings “Tit willow” to woo Katisha. Perhaps I’d find someone, too.

This definition popped up on my computer today:
“virago: an ill-tempered, overbearing woman; also, a woman of great strength and courage.”

Interesting that one word can have such negative and positive connotations. I think it’s a sign of society’s negative attitudes toward strong women.

“People hold on to their clutter because they are afraid to let it go–afraid of the emotions they may experience in the process of sorting through the stuff, afraid they may make a mistake and later regret getting rid of something, afraid they will leave themselves vulnerable, exposed or at risk in some way.”

This quote from Karen Kingston’s Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui applies to me. Getting rid of things makes me anxious. I tossed a lot of stuff in January. Now I’ve got to rest awhile.

I imagine that Iggy also feels anxious about tossing stuff. He thinks he might need it later.

Be less critical of others. That seems to be what blogger Tejvan Pettinger means when he says to “live in the heart” to achieve one of “The 6 Components of a Happy Life.”

Pettinger elaborates, “When we are constantly criticising others we can find neither peace nor happiness. However, if we live more in the heart we have a more tolerant, accepting attitude towards others.”

It’s easy for me to pick on Iggy, even though he has many virtues. For reasons that have nothing to do with him, I have a tendency to see the glass as “half-empty.” But I’m going to try to change.

I love my Iggy!

When Iggy makes a suggestion, I sometimes say “No” out of habit.

For example, I resisted when he wanted to move a bench into our entry hall. But I eventually gave in. Yesterday, the interior designer praised the bench because “it distracts the eye from the back of the couch.”

Hmm, maybe I should be more open-minded toward Iggy.

Iggy is getting a shock tonight.

This afternoon I rearranged our living room with the help of an interior design consultant. I had asked her if she could help make the room more inviting.

The main change was to push our two couches closer to the center of the room. Each of us has our own couch for when we watch movies. Apparently the psychology of interior design says lessening the physical distance between us will foster intimacy. She also thinks this will work well when we have guests.

I’ve got to live with this before I decide what I think.